paedophile and fine with it

[LaLa]

Thanks for expressing it again and defining this way "the major issue".

What I would suggest to anybody with this kind of problem, is therapy, which you've already rejected. Many people reject therapy for different reasons, so... I would then somehow try to identify the false convictions which are the basis of the fear, as well as their roots in past experiences. In your case, I didn't make it trough this point, because we get stuck mainly in some issues related to the way of our communication.

So let's try again and slowly.

First of all: I'm not aware of the deadly danger you claim to exist. Would you tell me what experiences led you to assume that your life would be in such a danger if "somebody (-?) knew about your opinions and attractions"?

(BTW; we do know about them and none of us is wanting you dead... Al least a proof that not everybody is as you assume. Are we statistically irrelevant in your eyes?)

[The Beholder]

where i live, gay people still have their homes vandalised, and they're just considered freaks, not monsters. i would lose my job immediately (not only because they would lose business, but because my boss has a young daughter). i would be homeless before long, which would be a death sentence even if i weren't attacked by anyone. what world do you live in where these dangers don't exist? why don't you tell me how many outed paedophiles there are who are able to live full lives without moving to the netherlands?

the issue here isn't an irrational fear, my fears are more than justified. the issue is how to i make it so that i'm not completely paralysed by them? particularly since being paralysed by fear is currently the thing most likely to get me outed (at least until internet privacy is a thing of the past)

[Cece.dedesl]

I've read through this post and my one blaring question is.... If you have never acted on your desires, if you are truly disgusted by lack of consent, and can and are attracted to women who can consent then what do you have to be scared about????

The only way your attraction to children could be discovered, is through illegal or improper acts. Child porn, molestation, ect... Why are you so scared to be discovered? Are you being honest with us, are you being honest with yourself? Do you really have your desires under control?

Seems to me, if you are ok with your attractions and know the difference between consent and non-consent then you have everything under control. The fact you have posted here however makes me wonder if there might be a part of you that fears you aren't in control? That perhaps, this post may be a way to get some support and strength?

[The Beholder]

I've read through this post and my one blaring question is.... If you have never acted on your desires, if you are truly disgusted by lack of consent, and can and are attracted to women who can consent then what do you have to be scared about????

yeah, thanks, i'll just tell that to all those rational people out there and i'm sure everything will be fine. it's not like there's a witch hunt going on or anything.

The only way your attraction to children could be discovered, is through illegal or improper acts. Child porn, molestation, ect... Why are you so scared to be discovered? Are you being honest with us, are you being honest with yourself? Do you really have your desires under control?

i have my actions under control, but nobody can have their desires under control. what you said is like saying nobody could ever tell you were attracted to someone without you openly declaring it. you know that's not true for regular people, why would you assume it was true for me? this is the bullshit i can't put up with, the expectation that my attraction is just a goddamn hobby. it's biological, it happens by itself, and the only way for it to not be visible is if i bury it! do you have any idea how much that hurts? and you can't just do it sometimes. i learned to assiciate the sight of feminine beauty with mortal terror, i can't just turn that off with girls my own age! it's the same attraction!

Seems to me, if you are ok with your attractions and know the difference between consent and non-consent then you have everything under control. The fact you have posted here however makes me wonder if there might be a part of you that fears you aren't in control? That perhaps, this post may be a way to get some support and strength?

one day people will understand how disgusting things like what you just said are. the equivalent of "how do you know you're really gay if you've never been with a girl?"

[Cece.dedesl]

First off, I know sexual attraction is something no one can control. Whether someone is attracted to the opposite sex, same sex, or children.

The difference is consent, children can't consent. That makes it wrong when you ACT on it. I can't help but feel your defensive and argumentative reaction is because you are scared you'll act.

The "witch hunt" occurs when someone acts in appropriately. Are you acting inappropriately?

[The Beholder]

First off, I know sexual attraction is something no one can control. Whether someone is attracted to the opposite sex, same sex, or children.

it says a lot that you see those as 3 different things.

children can't legally consent. there's no evidence that children lack the mental capacity to consent. i don't believe it's wrong, so why would i be "scared i'll act"? you're acting as though it's inevitable that i'd want to do something sexual with a child who did not consent. i don't have that capacity, because the very thought of nonconsent stops my sexual drive in its tracks. i mean, iff i want to make an erection go away, i can either think about men or think about rape. both kill arousal instantly, and i generally find the former less unpleasant. i'm literally incapable of what you're accusing me of desiring, so if you don't mind, i'd very much like if if you'd stop insulting me and try to help me with my problem!

[Cece.dedesl]

They are different. Not wrong, but different. If you ask a heterosexual man to have sex with another man, he would deem it different. Would you not?

I'm not passing judgement. But our individual sexual desires and responses are our own. Consent is the true difference between what is acceptable or not.

If a man or woman or child had sex with me without my consent, it would be wrong. If I was a child and did not have the understanding and the intellectual/emotional maturity to have sex it would be wrong as well.

In my opinion anyone under the age of 16, is a child. Over 16, it is situational. Some are mature enough, some aren't. Regardless how I feel, the law is the law.

[The Beholder]

yeah, where i live the age of consent was 14 less than a decade ago. you may need to modify your standards.

the fact is there are people who have had consensual sex as children with adults and have nothing but positive feelings about it now. this is not, however, the slightest bit relevant to the issue at hand, law, and more importantly, cultural prejudice make sexual contact with children a non-issue in my life. which is my safety and my well-being. nobody else is at risk here.

[Cece.dedesl]

Your safety should not be an issue if you are acting appropriately which was the thought around my initial post. It worries me you are so concerned when you clearly feel you have done nothing wrong.

There are a lot of children who have had negative responses as well. Justification can be dangerous for someone in your situation.

[The Beholder]

it hasn't a damn thing to do with how i'm acting, it's do do with how i'm feeling. as i tried to explain to you, my attraction to young girls is not separate from my attraction to girls my age or older, not to mention the nightmare minefield in between. i can't just turn one off without damaging the other. burying all outward signs of attraction is an all or nothing deal. this cuts me off from having normal relationships with girls my own age! jesus, i'm interested in a girl at work, and i can't even look her in the eye, much less talk to her! and even if i did, i couldn't get close to her without being terrified that she'd find out about me! not to mention that i thought she was a few years older than she actually is. i can't tell! i simply cannot build the mental barrier that seems to come so easy to you!

Your safety should not be an issue if you are acting appropriately which was the thought around my initial post. It worries me you are so concerned when you clearly feel you have done nothing wrong.

once again, you wouldn't say that to a gay man who lived in terror. if you can't drop this double standard, how do you expect to help me?

There are a lot of children who have had negative responses as well.

and adults. in victorian times, when enjoying sex was considered a perversion for high-class women, they were traumatised as well. and it shouldn't need to be explained that nonconsent and abuse can make any positive thing into a trauma.

[Cece.dedesl]

You should feel blessed you can feel attraction to women in your age group. The majority of people attracted to children do not have that option.

I'm not going to get into an argument with you. I feel we agree on the basics that sex without consent is wrong. If you want to battle on the age of consent, go for it but it won't change the laws in the area you live.

Bottom line, my whole reason for posting is if you have your actions under control, great. If you don't, then don't beat around the bush and get help. As long as you don't act, or behave inappropriately, your secret should stay safe.

If you feel this much anxiety, my guess is you are questioning your resolve.

[The Beholder]

imagine a gay kid came here and said "i'm scared the other kids at my high school will find out i'm gay and beat me up. they say that gay guys should be beaten up because they just want to sodomise every guy they see."

then some asshole member said "sounds to me like you must actually kind of want to sodomise all of them and you're afraid you will. otherwise, you'd have nothing to be afraid of"

a practising therapist would lose his job for saying something like that! you should be ashamed of yourself! apologise!

[Cece.dedesl]

I'm obviously hitting a nerve. I can be rather blunt in my assessments. Good luck. I hope you can find peace.

[The Beholder]

you can be a prejudiced piece of shit in your assessments. people like you are the reason i'm afraid to go outside.

[Cece.dedesl]

Prejudice, is making an illinformed opinion. I guarantee you that is not the case. Again, good luck.

[IrmaJean]

Please let's talk with one another respectfully.

None of us can control or change how others respond to us. We can only change how we respond.

[LaLa]

imagine a gay kid came here and said "i'm scared the other kids at my high school will find out i'm gay and beat me up. they say that gay guys should be beaten up because they just want to sodomise every guy they see."

What would you say to such a boy in this situation?

(Of course, I wouldn't say what you posted as analogy to C's attitude.)

people like you are the reason i'm afraid to go outside

I think you said this just in anger, without thinking. Because if it was true, than your fear really wouldn't have any reason as C. is not the kind of person who'd be dangerous to your life.

But I have to say that I was surprised by your description of the situation where you live - I supposed that in your home country, that's not possible. (BTW; there is a closer option than Netherlands, as far as I know: Quebec. I heard it's very tolerant/liberal, mainly to gays. The % of homosexuals in Quebec is 15 (almost 4x the average), because many of them move there due to the liberalism. Of course, I don't say they like pedophiles, but I wanted you to know this, at least.)

I think I know understand your problem; you're scared because it's possible to notice when you feel attracted to anybody. You said something like that it's the same for everybody (-not only you), but this is something I don't agree with. Maybe it isn't possible to influence, but maybe is - and this possibility could be a solution for you. I know that when I'm attracted to somebody, it's not visible on me (if I don't want to make it visible intentionally) and I know many people who are the same in this. Please, notice that it doesn't involve "destroying" the attraction. It just involves being able to behave "as if one doesn't feel anything special". And I think this is something that could be learned. For me, the main factor has always been "to feel OK about the attraction, even if not wanting it to be visible". Can you see what I mean? As far as you obsess about the possibility of being "revealed" (also when it's not a child, as you said you have other reasons for being uneasy also around women), you are very nervous when being attracted, so your physiologic reactions mirror the nervousness and thus also the attraction, which is physiologically manifested by the same processes.

What do you think?

[LaLa]

P.S.: It was me who removed "the worst" of your posts here. Maybe some more would require moderation, but, unfortunately, we (on this site) don't have displayed explicit rules yet, so...

[FrenzyFire]

Something that might be interesting to you is this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_transparency

In general it just means that for the most part we THINK people can read our thoughts more than they actually can. So while you THINK your attractions are obvious to everybody, that isn't necessarily true. As long as you haven't done anything wrong you don't have to worry very much.

A question is...if you are attracted to older women as well, you have mentioned that a relationship with an older woman would not satisfy you. You would need to tell her about you, tell her who you are attracted to etc. Could you explain why you would need to? You said that your attraction to girls is just like your attraction to women...wouldn't this mean that it would be pretty much equivalent to you being attracted to another woman and wanting to tell your current girlfriend about it? Because Im sure many people can relate to this specifically....you won't be the only person I'm sure who has other attractions that they hide for the sake of their relationship. So can you explain why you feel that this attraction would negatively effect your relationship with an older woman despite that you would be just as satisfied in that relationship?

[The Beholder]

i'm done with this. none of you are listening.

[LaLa]

I don't understand how you can ask for help repeatedly and at the same time ignore what people are asking you. It really sounds like if you expect us to read your mind, understand everything at once and give you a great advise which will work and miraculously change your life. At least I know now that it's not a shame that you won't see a therapist, as a therapist would only annoy you like we do. Help with difficult life situations / positions is never something straightforwardly provided "on a tray" for you to "take it" and "become happy". Help/therapy is a long (often years-lasting) process requiring lots of patience and efforts of the patient/client; the efforts to understand new possibilities of looking at the world and at one-self, the patience to explore many ways of thinking and not to give up when there are too many cul-de-sacs, ...

I don't say we are therapists! I don't think we don't make mistakes. But I do think that at least the questions people here provided you make sense and that they might have led us to new-ones, better-ones, but only based on your explicative answers.

I wonder if it could be possible for you to learn at least something new from this communication. Because I see here some things that have arisen and could be instructive for you. However, you don't seem to notice.

The most obvious thing you could learn here about your relationships to other people is that you have (always? very often?) expectations which don't "meet the reality": You expected us to ban you, you expected that everybody would want to kill you, ... and at the same time, you expected that someone here will understand your problem without your detailed explanations and answers to most of his/her questions and that someone will provide you a miraculous solution without the need of any change from your side, any effort to see things from a different perspective, ...

You also seem to expect that people here are perhaps just something like robots meant to give answers and advises without any emotions, without the "right" to make mistakes and misunderstand, ... without having emotional reactions to your rude words, ... and "thus" also not worth of a decent treating by you. Have someone here ever called you names, used gross language or expelled you from here? But your reactions are often of the kind as if we were either rude to you or as if you talked just to a computer, angry at "his wrong program not providing you the output you expected".

If this was the way you communicate with most people also in person, then there would be a chance they won't like you at all even long before they would have the chance to notice your attractions. I think that in your position, I would perhaps be more worried about this than about the pedophilia...

I know this is not a post "to the point". I suppose, based on my experience with you, it will only make you angry. But it's you who has closed this "discussion", so I mean this as "a concluding remark" from my side; a try to explain my view of this thread. And your anger? I suppose you're already angry enough and this won't make it significantly worse.

I'm sorry that you feel so isolated and scared. But the only advise I'm able to give you, based on your behaviour here, is that you would mostly need to reevaluate your attitude to people in general, identify/notice your traits which lead you constantly to conflicts, even with those who genuinely try to be somehow helpful to you and don't judge you based on your attractions, and think out what you could do with those traits, what and how you could try to do differently. (Tasks for many months, unfortunately. But it's better to make big efforts many months than to suffer all your life, isn't it?)

Good luck!

[LaLa]

Actually, one advise occurred to me:

Read (auto)biographical books and watch documentaries about people who lived or live under a dictatorship and get some inspiration about the way they preserved their personal freedom of mind (even though some of them being imprisoned, ...), how they coped with the situation and preserved their sanity and clear conscience etc.

(If you understood my language, I would have several recommendations of great books for you - many very wise, admirable people who used to live during the Nazism and/or Communism in Europe have written about their lives. It's impossible to mediate just a simple "take home message" from those books, one needs to read them for receiving the whole picture.)

[LaLa]

I'm sorry for all the mistakes I've done when communicating with you.

I'd known that I'm not very good in this (= in attempts to help people), but after your today's PM for me, I feel like a piece of shit. Thank you for opening my eyes. I had almost got the impression that although not always/often helpful, I used to be at least not harmful.

Well, ... an English idiom (or what is it?) occurs to me, a bit gross: Shit happens. Sorry. I'm only human and make mistakes. Sometimes more and sometimes even harmful.

However, I think I'll be still able to live with it. (-Hope you're not very disappointed or disgusted by this.)

[IrmaJean]

I hope we can regroup here and try again. We can all learn from of our interactions, even when we have some difficulty in them.

i'm done with this. none of you are listening.

You mention feeling afraid of others' reactions to you. You want to openly be yourself, but it's hard to get close to someone. How can we help? Would it help to talk more about these feelings? Sometimes just talking and feeling heard helps me.

[The Beholder]

i can't believe i'm putting myself out there again, but i don't know what else to do.

after i stopped posting here, i started posting at psychforums. i can't describe how cruel they were. for weeks, all i could think about was how i wanted to die. i still can hardly go a day without feeling like that. i don't know what to do. i just want to die, but i could never put my partner through that, and that just makes me feel even more trapped, like some kind of ghost, forced to continue existing, when i just want it to end. i feel sure that if i did not have her in my life, i would have killed myself after being treated the way i was there. it's unbearable. i can't get help, i can't bear to hide, and i can't just die. i need a way out.